The present disclosure relates to a charging apparatus, and a charge control method.
In recent years, many portable appliances typified by mobile phones have come to be widely used. These portable appliances are provided with charge storage devices such as secondary cells. Particularly, in recent years, as a consequence of increase in the awareness of environmental issues and increase in the performance of secondary cells, the secondary cells are coming to be more often used than primary cells. The secondary cells are charge storage devices that can be used over and over again by being charged.
However, there is a limit to the number of times the secondary cells can be used (hereinafter, life). Also, it is known that the life of secondary cells is dependent on the way of charging. For example, it is known that if a secondary cell is left unused in a fully charged state, the life of the secondary cell will become short. Accordingly, various charge control methods are proposed to extend the life of the secondary cells. For example, JP 2010-55226A discloses a method of performing control such that a secondary cell becomes fully charged at a specific time.